Writing Across the CurriculumWAC Basics

Based upon Susan McLeod

“The Pedagogy of WAC”

WAC Started … In the 1970’s

As a response to declining skills

As a way for all faculty to learn to help students’ to write well

For all faculty, throughout the disciplines

WAC Challenges the presumption that teaching writing is for

English Composition

Works with the premise that those in the various disciplines are best suited to teach the genre of that specific discipline

Two Central WAC Ideas

Writing to Learn

Writing to Communicate

Writing to Learn WAC asserts that writing is not only a tool to

articulate what a student has already learned, but can also be used to understand and internalize course content

According to McLeod referencing James Britton, “language is central to learning because it is through language that we organize our representation of the world.”

Writing to Learn Ideas

Dialectical notebook

Dialogue journal

Foreign language journal

Freewrites

Writing to Communicate “Focuses on writing to an audience outside the self

in order to inform that audience”

“Is reader based rather than writer based”

Posits that writing and epistemology are connected

“Involves learning the processes by which experts in the field develop and disseminate knowledge”

Writing to Communicate

Is genre based- the student becomes an

apprentice to the dicipline

When running WAC Workshops

Be sure to model the pedagogical approaches

you espouse

The Future of WAC WAC had a lot of support, but now the excitement

in the trend is fading.

It was once highly funded, and now the funding is dwindling.

I believe the future of WAC is in its integration in teaching methods. This is where we come in – to get the word out.